227. Questoning your thoughts can bring relief from mature dating pain

“Is that true?” “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Those are the first of four questions Byron Katie offers in the simple process of investigating our thoughts that she calls The Work. Those questions, or any other deep questioning of your thoughts, will prove almost magical when you’re feeling stuck or hurting as you’re dating in these senior and mature years of life.

The reason a few simple questions are so powerful is that they make us stop and see reality, which is just the way things are. We’ve all heard of people who express thoughts like:

• I really need a partner.
• If he loved me he’d do what I want.
• It’s better to settle for him than to be alone.
• Love never lasts anyway.
• If I tell him how I truly feel he’ll be mad (or hurt).
• I don’t want to hurt her.
• If he really cared he’d know what I want.
• If I get angry enough she won’t do that again.
• If I do what he wants, even when I don’t want to, he’ll do what I want too.
• This bothers me but I won’t say anything because I don’t want to cause trouble.

Maybe you’ve even believed thoughts like this yourself. But are any of them, or a thousand more you could ask, really true? Is it really true you need a partner, for instance? I once knew a woman who said she got into one unhappy relationship after another simply because she believed that thought. She was unable to see that the relationship wasn’t right for her because she thought she needed to have a man. Eventually, though, each connection unraveled anyway, she told me, and she’d be off desperately grasping at the next wrong man because she thought she needed someone.

Every belief we have about relationships can be questioned. Many times you realize that, even though you’ve believed it all your life, what you think just isn’t true. With questioning you don’t have to try to use will power to change yourself. All you do is see reality and change happens automatically. It’s no different than walking down the road to get water from a mirage. You only have to see once that there’s no water there, and never again will you pick up a bucket and head for a mirage. It doesn’t take will power. It simply takes seeing what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer